Smart Factory and automation.
Software orchestrating production, robots in fulfillment, and an honest separation of what is deployed from what exists only on vendor slides.
RIP and workflow orchestration
Caldera One platform instead of a zoo of RIPs
CalderaRIP V18 (Nov 2024): Adobe PDF Print Engine 6.3, and the REST API first added in V17 now pulls media and ink levels off the printers. V18.2 (Aug 2025): Summa F and S Series cutters run cut jobs on CalderaRIP output without manual setup. Then the portfolio rebuild shown at PRINTING United and circulated in December 2025: GrandRIP and VisualRIP folded into one “Caldera RIP” on three tiers, Essentials, Pro and Max, each carrying the full feature set, so color management is no longer an upsell. Garment is a separate line: the DTF and DTG RIP launched in February 2025, with white-ink tools and up to 12 inks.
Sources: Texintel (V18) · Texintel (V18.2) · WhatTheyThink (portfolio) · WhatTheyThink (DTF/DTG). Caldera’s own site turns bots away, so every item links to the release as the trade press carried it.
Hybrid Software The first GPU-native industrial RIP
Hybrid Software Helix (formerly Global Graphics) showed SmartRIP in Nov 2025, a RIP computed natively on the GPU, derived from SmartDFE, with integration “in hours, not months”. Behind it sits a US patent for AI in the RIP (No. 11,720,769): a model trained on the PDF operations inside the Harlequin RIP, which predicts the minimum constant raster data rate, and therefore the press speed, for a given job. The direction: the RIP as an infrastructure component, not an application.
Sources: Hybrid Software · TexIntel
Kornit A machine maker buys the software layer
The PrintFactory acquisition (Apr 2026) gives Kornit cloud-based color and production management for mixed fleets too, alongside Kornit Konnect (fleet analytics since 2019). Margin is shifting from iron to orchestration; Kornit’s All-Inclusive Click (AIC) model, named in the same release, bills per impression rather than per machine.
Sources: GlobeNewswire · Kornit IR
ColorGATE / ErgoSoft The 2025 releases: automation, not fireworks
ColorGATE Productionserver V25 (FESPA 2025): Adobe PDF Print Engine 6.4, 2000+ drivers, an Automation variant with a REST API for ERP integrations. ErgoSoft RIP 2025 Winter Release (Oct 2025): automatic separations including special inks like white or clear, smart media matching, barcode automation. Inèdit neoStampa Delta remains the textile specialist; its DTG mode was announced in 2020 with up to 35% ink savings, and that figure has not been restated since.
Sources: ColorGATE · ErgoSoft · WhatTheyThink
HP PrintOS Production Hub + AI vectorization
At Amplify 2025 HP showed Production Hub, centralized job management and real-time remote production control (rolling out from May 2025), plus AI Vectorization, which converts raster drawings into CAD-editable files. HP’s “up to 80%” saving belongs to that tool inside HP Build Workspace and is measured on construction documents, not on garment prepress.
Source: HP
Web-to-print / OMS The order layer is getting AI too
OnPrintShop V12.0 with “AI-enabled web-to-print” (Jan 2025). Infigo booked 18.2% growth in 2025 and took nearly 60% of its new customers in North America, crediting digital ordering and automation; it also folded in the Printess editor for personalization. In decoration shops, DecoNetwork and Printavo remain the standard; the order-routing middleware is still Order Desk.
Sources: PRINTING United · Infigo 2025 results · Infigo × Printess
Robotics in apparel fulfillment
Case study THG Fulfil × Libiao: swarm sortation in practice
THG Fulfil: 80 T-Sort robots at 14 induction stations lifted a site capped at 250K sortation units a day to 600K, running 11,151 items an hour at 99.9% sort accuracy, live in 35 days, peak labor dependency down 45 FTE. In June 2025 THG ordered 430 robots for its Manchester warehouse, to reach about 1M units a day from September. The commercial shape matters as much as the hardware: it is sold as Robotics-as-a-Service, so no heavy upfront capex, and because capacity follows robot count rather than conveyor length the fleet can be sized to the season. Kuehne+Nagel, running the same robots at Châtres near Paris, values it for exactly that. Christophe Vandrome, contract logistics director at Kuehne+Nagel France, says the installation “enables teams to maintain continuity of operations while remaining flexible and responsive, particularly during seasonal peaks or site changes”. Other Libiao deployments: Olive Young (320 robots, Gyeonggi) and Uniqlo.
Sources: THG Ingenuity · Parcel and Postal Technology International · MMH · Automated Warehouse · TechNode
Goods-to-person Exotec and AutoStore take on fashion
Exotec Skypod: Oxford Industries’ multi-brand center in Lyons, Georgia (Tommy Bahama, Lilly Pulitzer, Johnny Was; ProMat 2025) and a warehouse at Yeoju for Korean platform MUSINSA, announced May 2026 and Exotec’s first job in Korea. AutoStore launched Pay-Per-Pick (a per-pick fee instead of CAPEX) and agreed a global supply framework with Amazon, reported Aug 20, 2026; it sets procurement terms and, on AutoStore’s own wording, carries no purchasing commitment. THG runs AutoStore, Libiao and Geek+ across its fulfilment network, not in one building, and the mix varies by site. On THG’s own numbers, 95% of all units sold now move through some form of automation.
Sources: THG Ingenuity · Robotics 24/7 · Retail Technology Innovation Hub · i4.0 Today · Supply Chain Dive
DTF application ROQ Impress: an automated transfer-application machine
Debuted at PRINTING United 2025: an automated DTF transfer-application line, ~500 pcs/h with a single operator. This is the missing link in DTF automation: printing has been fast for years, the bottleneck was the press. Alongside: Melco Summit (embroidery on demand) and UV-DTF from Mimaki.
Source: ASI
Reality check: what’s deployed and what’s a slide
AI vision quality control in garment printing
The facts: the flagship inline inspection systems (AVT Helios/Esko, BST TubeScan) are tools for labels and narrow web, and none has a documented deployment in apparel POD. Closest to reality is the digital camera EFI added to the Reggiani BOLT back in 2021, which delivers consistent print results plus faster printhead replacement and alignment, alongside nozzle-out and uniformity compensation. After that, research-stage fabric defect detection. The claim that “8K cameras behind drying tunnels are a DTG standard” is not supported by any source.
The takeaway: automated 100% inspection in garment decoration is an open market gap; whoever closes it with an off-the-shelf product takes the market.
Sources: AVT · BST · PRINTING United (BOLT, 2021)
“Predictive maintenance” — marketing ahead of the product
The facts: Kornit Konnect, EFI IQ and Durst Analytics are monitoring and analytics: printer and consumable status, historical trend data, production-block alerts, ink and material usage. The EFI list is the specification from its 2020 launch — fiery.com refuses automated readers, so nothing newer could be checked here. Durst goes one step further and lets you check the condition of spare parts for preventive maintenance, which is condition monitoring, not forecasting. Nobody in this segment publishes a case study for predicting a fault 48–72 hours ahead.
In practice: count value from what is measurable today (OEE, media consumption, service response time) and treat “predictive” as vendor roadmap.
Sources: Digital Printer (Fiery IQ) · Durst Analytics · Durst software (feature list)
AI on the design and sales side
POD platforms are building in generators
Printify has an AI Image Generator in its product creator; Printful has background removal and an AI package for sellers. Generating graphics has stopped being an edge and become a feature.
Kittl: $36M for AI design for POD
The $36M Series B led by IVP was announced in January 2024, not this year: Kittl had just passed 1 million designers, said it was cash-flow positive, and was rolling out ImageGen V2, its own text-to-graphic model. Canva answered at scale with Visual Suite 2.0 in April 2025. For most POD sellers these are now the two tabs open next to the storefront.
Sources: Kittl · TechCrunch · PetaPixel (Canva)
The other side of the coin
The flood of AI listings triggered a seller revolt on Etsy and… demand for “hand-drawn” among end customers: print shops report customers explicitly asking for original, artist-made design. AI raises the supply of graphics; value shifts to curation and brand.
Sources: Impressions · NBC News